


Haunted

by persephone20



Series: the Haunted series [1]
Category: The Vampire Diaries
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-31
Updated: 2011-05-12
Packaged: 2017-10-19 08:10:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephone20/pseuds/persephone20
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“We’re vampires, Elena. We’ve lived for almost 150 years. The sorts of taboos you worry about don’t really faze us anymore. Especially considering the circumstances under which we were made.”</i> AU series that follows events from 1X19.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Haunted (1/1)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was a mere little summary fic that has been blown into the awesome mess that it is by the wonderful coquilleon.

There he was. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, his face as clear of the mask he usually wore as she had ever seen it. She didn’t realise it—her mind was a blur as she took each individual step, reached the bottom of the stairs, allowed him to take her hand—but her hand had been shaking the entire time, her heart pounding more than she was sure was healthy. And worse, she was sure he could hear it.

“Where’s Stefan?” She asked the question too quickly, as though the asking could make up the reason why her heart pounded as it did.

Her eyes worried at Damon’s immediately flat lips and evasive eyes. He shook his head very slightly. Elena doubted anyone outside the two of them would have seen it. But the meaning was clear. They couldn’t talk much here, and that didn’t do anything to calm Elena’s heart.

“Smile.”

The single word command coming a couple of moments later surprised her. How could she be expected to smile when Stefan wasn’t here, she still didn’t know how bad he was, and Damon hadn’t told her anything that might reassure her?

But Damon was pulling that half-smile, half-grimace, as his eyes darted in vague directions towards founding families. The last thing any of them needed was unwanted attention. She’d already noticed a strange look on Jenna’s face, after Elena began her dance with Damon; a questioning ‘Where is Stefan?’

Elena pasted her own half-grimace on her features and tried to dance like it was all okay.

“That’s better,” Damon purred in her ear in one of the brief instances when the dance allowed them close enough for him to speak like that. She could feel his warm breath against her ear long after he’d drawn away like nothing had happened. It wasn’t _difficult_ to dance with Damon, so much as distracting. He knew the dance so well, could do it even without paying attention. Elena thought she would have liked it if every single move he made hadn’t been so exactly precise. His whole body just seemed to... flow.

He took her into the waltz that signified the second half of the dance. Elena tried to catch his eye, but he was looking anywhere else but at her in a way she suspected was deliberate. While he left her to her own thoughts, she wondered how his breath could be so warm while the rest of him was so cold, then berated herself for being able to focus on Damon when the one she should have been thinking of was Stefan.

The dance came to an end, with Damon bowing in front of her with a half smile cocked and a devilish look in his eye.

“I want to know where Stefan is,” Elena whispered, confident in the knowledge that Damon would be able to hear her.

Damon just lifted one finger against his lips, before taking her hand. They had some time left to them before Miss Mystic was announced.

“You know that Amber girl is missing?” Damon’s eyes darted back and forth across Elena’s gaze.

“How do you know Amber?” Elena asked dumbly, knowing it wasn’t the right question yet, after this long of worrying about Stefan, the idea of finally figuring out what he’d been doing seemed terrifying.

Damon waved her question aside as though it was nothing. “I don’t. People keep mentioning her. Stefan’s missing. Amber’s missing. Get it?” His eyes bored into hers, but Elena didn’t want to believe.

“No... He wouldn’t.”

Damon was growing more exasperated. “The Stefan _you_ know wouldn’t.” He shook his head. “You’ve never met the Stefan I knew.”

Elena stared at him, wide eyed in horror. After a moment, Damon swore under his breath. The line up before Miss Mystic was announced. It seemed a distant announcement, one barely worth noticing.

“You’d better go.” There was something more gentle in Damon’s voice this time, matching what she saw in his eyes, when he spoke this time. He nodded once. “I’ll go see what I can find.”

Nodding in distraction, Elena joined the line up, next to Caroline.

“Where’s Amber?” Caroline asked, and it took everything Elena had in her to answer the question calmly.

After Caroline was awarded Miss Mystic, Elena was drawn away by Damon. Blood, he said, as he pressed her against the wall and spoke quietly. Proof, almost. As he gave her the details, he caressed her arm, hand grazing. Only afterwards did Elena reflect back on it. Had he been trying to comfort her?

There was nothing comforting about the screaming coming from Amber when they found her and Stefan in the woods. Nothing gentle about the way Stefan picked Damon up and threw him against a tree. Elena had no idea how she or Bonnie were supposed to restrain him in the instant that they were the only ones between he and blood.

Damon pulled himself up again faster than a human could have, but he didn’t throw himself at Stefan in revenge. Elena saw now what she should have seen when Damon rushed to take Stefan back from his torturers in Pearl’s house. It was dark, but the intension was clear in every line of Damon’s body. It was in his outstretched hands as he tried to talk Stefan down, same as it had been when he held her out in the rain and slightly shook her as he told her how important it was that he stopped her from going in after him for Stefan. It didn’t matter that Bonnie was the one to restrain Stefan, or that Elena was the first one Stefan looked to after the event. She saw him now.

Damon loved Stefan.

Elena refused to let Damon go back into the boarding house without her. It wasn’t like their invasion into Pearl’s house. This time, the two of them talked over a plan. Elena would go in first. She would distract him, so that Stefan—who probably wasn’t aware enough anyway—wouldn’t realise that Damon was right there with her on the other side of the door. She would try to talk him down. Of the two of them, Elena had the best chance of doing that. After that, if she couldn’t talk him down, there would be vervain. And, if that failed, there would be Damon.

The Stefan she saw in that room in the boarding house was as unlike Stefan as Damon had been unlike his usual self all throughout that day. She tried not to let it bother her. When he yelled at her, she replied calmly back. When he demanded that she not come any closer, she tried to give him his space. When he pinned her against the wall, she felt fear, yes. He was that much stronger than her, drinking human blood, and she herself was human. But that wasn’t all she felt.

In the moments where she wondered if the first part of the plan had failed, wondered how long Damon would wait before bursting into the room, Elena felt a hitch of her breath that wasn’t from pain or from fear. He was pressed so closely to her, she could taste the smell of Amber’s blood in the air between them. He was breathing heavily against her, and that wasn’t all she could feel against her. Though she tried to calm her breathing, tried to kick her brain back into thinking, it was a while before she could bring herself to pull out the vervain. She told herself that she was just giving Stefan as long as she could to change his mind.

He didn’t change his mind, and either did Elena, as she stuck the vervain dart into the small of his back. Then it was Stefan’s turn to gasp, Stefan’s turn to fall weak. She tried not to be moved by the betrayed look in his eyes, and failed. She made herself watch as Damon came into the room to lock Stefan up in the basement, as had been their plan. She steadfastly ignored the probing look of concern that he directed at her, until he moved past her and picked Stefan up effortlessly.

They didn’t speak to each other that night as they sat on opposite sides of the hall downstairs. It wasn’t until the next night, after Elena came back from school—another day when Bonnie ignored her—that they began again to interact with each other in the way that had, somewhere along the line, become comfortable to them both.

“Was it a good day at school today?” Damon asked dryly, as he poured himself a glass of scotch. As the days went on, Elena came to notice he drunk no more human blood than he needed to survive. All the rest of his drinking was to take off the edge.

“Passable,” Elena replied, attempting a lofty pretension from where she sat slumped over the nearby armchair, legs hanging over one of the arms.

It began a state between them that was almost normal. Normal from the point of view of the outside world didn’t really matter. Jenna got phone calls not to worry, and Alaric got phone calls that he might help Jenna not to worry. For as long as Elena spent all her time in the boarding house, Damon divided his time equally between herself and his brother.

She never knew the content of the conversations that went on between them while she was at school. For herself, she felt ever more guilty the longer Stefan remained in the basement, and then chose to stay in the basement. She hadn’t been lying when she spoke to him in his bedroom. This was all her fault. She had forced him to drink from her. If it hadn’t been for that...

“You shouldn’t think like that.” Damon was getting good, too good, at reading the expressions on her face and divining their meanings.

Still, Elena opted for ignorance. “I’m not thinking at all.”

“Ahh, I see what you’re doing there,” Damon replied, gesturing to her with a half full glass of scotch. It slopped against the sides. “Won’t work though. I’ve seen the marks you’re getting at school, without even trying.” Damon nodded his head knowingly, deliberately trying to get a rise from her.

It worked, not as well as it might have several weeks back, but it worked. “You’ve gone through my bag?”

“Security issue,” Damon nodded, glancing up towards the ceiling. “Can’t chance unknown substances in the house right now.” He took a mouthful of scotch.

Elena scoffed openly at him. “Yeah, like I’m going to be the one bringing those substances into this house.”

Damon’s eyes zeroed in on her. “Because you think this is your fault,” he said. He paused, waited for her to deny, or accept, this statement. She did neither. He sat up in his chair, no longer maintaining the pretence of lazy relaxation. “It’s not, you know.”

“I know, I know, blah, I know.” Elena shook her head. She dared one frustrated glance in Damon’s direction, before facing away again. “I just can’t get it out of my head, okay?”

Damon was silent for a time. Then he sat back. “That’s alright,” he said. “Stefan thinks it’s his fault too.”

Sitting in front of the fireplace at that boarding house during that time, Elena came to many truths about her place in the relationship that the brothers shared. Damon would never steal her from Stefan. To be honest, Elena wasn’t sure that she wanted him to. All of that… it felt too much like Katherine all over again. And she loved Stefan. Some of her calmest times where on the visits she made to him without Damon, her sitting on one side of the locked door, Stefan on the other, without either of them needing to say anything. Just being near to him was something good. She hoped it was the same thing for him.

Whenever they spoke, Stefan inevitably tried to get her to leave, to get on with her school stuff and her social life. She didn’t need a hundred and something vampire who was addicted to blood holding up her life. Every time she replied with the marks Damon had seen from her school stuff, or politely requested him to name one vampire who wasn’t addicted to blood, he didn’t seem to know what to say. And so they would lapse back into that comfortable silence again, him comfortable in the fact that he had given her an out, she comfortable in the fact that she had denied it.

And yet, there was Damon. Whenever he stirred and got up to get something to drink he would ask if she required anything, water, food, alcohol. She herself abstained from alcohol. Food was something that she only ate by rout, knowing that her body would grow weak otherwise. There was always a full glass of water sitting beside her that Damon ensured was always topped up. He gave a particular kind of silent smile whenever she noticed it was there.

She loved him as well. Damon. She knew that now, recognised the emotion she’d felt when she’d seen Damon at the base of the stairs at the dance for what it was. And what it wasn’t. It was such a different love to what she felt for Stefan. It was still, like Damon could be himself when he wasn’t so violently passionate. She didn’t see a lot of Damon’s violent passion in those days. Even on the phone to Liz, Damon was subdued. Elena wondered, if she’d had the vampire brothers’ hearing, whether she would have heard Liz questioning him on that.

She had to leave the boarding house eventually. Jenna would have freaked out if she didn’t. She explained to Stefan that she wasn’t leaving because of him. It even seemed as though he was finally ready to hear it.

“I know,” he said. “You would have left days ago if it was.”

But it still wasn’t enough to encourage him out of the basement.

“You know you’re only locked up in here now because you want to be?” she told him, peering at him through the small, barred window in the door.

Stefan had only nodded once. He stood up so she could look him in the eye while they spoke, but he didn’t stand near enough to the door that they could touch. Elena rested her fingers against the bars longingly.

 _Bye..._ “See you soon,” she murmured.

Damon made a large scene of her leaving. Having ready-made a packed lunch, he handed it to her, complete with a paper bag, and that bright, cheeky smirk.

“Have a good time,” he wished her, waggling his fingers off after her once she relieved him of the paper back.

She saluted him at the door with the lunch he’d made. A genuine, honest smile tugged at her lips.

This is what she didn’t know:  
After Elena left the house, Damon stood by the open front door and watched her leave until she was out of sight. Then, turning on his heel, he pushed the door shut and strode down to the basement.

“You’re a moron.”

He offered the opinion to Stefan without any lead up or fear of reprisal.

Stefan looked up at his brother from where he was sitting on the stone floor of his self-imposed prison, replying with a mild, “Thank you.”

“No.” Damon nodded twice, his lips thin with everything else he wasn’t saying. His eyes flashed as he said again, “You’re a real moron.”

Stefan sighed. “Is there a particular reason for this, or are you just taking advantage of the fact that I can’t walk away?

“Can’t?” Damon snorted. “Won’t. Didn’t even leave your cage to wish Elena a real goodbye, did you? What kind of a lame ass boyfriend are you?”

“I thank you for your opinion, Damon...” Stefan started, demonstrating the calm he had been quite sure he’d lost. Damon interrupted, not even noticing the reversion in his younger brother.

“No! You don’t get to thank me for my opinion. I’m the one who’s been out there all this time, talking to _your_ girlfriend, making sure _your_ girlfriend is okay, while you..! You’ve been locked away in here. Kicking back. Taking it easy. No need to worry. Damon’s out there being the good brother now. I can relax. I can take it easy. Nothing to worry about.”

Stefan was silent for a while. Damon was silent too, breathing a little heavier than was usual in the aftermath of his outburst. After a moment, he quirked an eyebrow. Surely some of that was likely to get a response?

It did. “That’s a terrible impression of me.”

The silence between them after that stretched out for longer.

Stefan’s next response, when he finally made it, was slow and considered. “You like her.”

“Of course I like her!” Damon answered with an eye roll. “I...”

“Love her.”

Damon gave a snort from his side of the bars. "Love, brother? What does that even mean to creatures like us?"

"Don't joke, Damon."

Damon looked to Stefan, a wry twist still in his lips, words like 'But I joke about everything' almost out of his mouth. Something in Stefan's eyes stopped it. Damon sighed. His little brother really was no fun.

“Is it easier to come out and say it while I’m locked in a cage?” Stefan continued, when Damon said nothing. He stood up and moved closer to the door than he’d come to Elena. The two brothers could easily have touched, though neither of them made the attempt to. In fact, Damon was readily stepping back.

“Uh uh.” Damon wagged a finger back and forth, as if wise to the tricks that his brother played. “You forget. I never came out and said anything.” He lifted his chin as though that re-assured him the upper ground in this conversation.

Stefan nodded, broke eye contact with Damon. “I should have expected it. You have been spending a lot of time together. If you didn’t feel something for her, you wouldn’t have been willing to spend all that time.” He paused. Then asked Damon, “Do you know what she feels about all this?”

“There isn’t an ‘all this’ to feel anything about!” Damon stormed close to the basement door again, eyes boring between the bars in the door as though he could compel Stefan by his sheer presence. “It’s time you came out of this cage. Well past time.”

“No. It’s not safe.” Stefan answered just as quickly as he had every other time either of them had put the point to him. A different consideration occurred to him. Damon could see it in the guilt shining out of his eyes. “Go. You should go after her. It’s obvious what you want. Why don’t you just take it?”

Damon scoffed. “Like you even know what I want right now, little brother. Like you even know what you want.”

He tried to distract Stefan with animal blood, a rabbit that Damon himself had hunted and brought back because he knew Stefan thought it tasted less bad than other animal blood. When Stefan refused, Damon sighed.

“Screw safe.” Damon pulled open the basement door. It had been unlocked for days, but Stefan’s eyes widened at the strong wood opening to reveal his way out. Damon stared Stefan straight in the eyes as he held the door open. “Either you get out of this room, or I’m going to go out after Elena, and I’m going to drink from her.” A cruel smile shaped his lips. “After all, we both know how very _tasty_ she is, don’t we?”

Familiar intensity suddenly filled Stefan. “You stay away from Elena,” he said in a low voice.

Damon grinned straight up to the ceiling, as though to an audience he’d been performing for. “And finally we’re back on the right song sheet! I’m the bad brother, Stefan. Not you. Now, why don’t we get back to the way things are meant to be, and you stop saying things you know nothing about.”

He walked away from the open basement door. He’d only gotten five steps down the hall when Stefan caught up with him, clamping a hand on his arm. The cocky grin was still on Damon’s lips.

Stefan, on the other hand, looked haggard. “You didn’t mean...”

“You better guess I did mean, and act like you’re ready to stop it.” Without effort, Damon shrugged his arm from Stefan’s hold and sauntered the rest of the way into the main part of the house.

  
[ Part 2](http://community.livejournal.com/back_in_town/27926.html#cutid1)


	2. Haunted (2/4)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was a mere little summary fic that has been blown into the awesome mess that it is by the wonderful coquilleon.

Damon flicked daisy heads from their stems and moved his black boots to stomp them underfoot. No one would guess to find him here, on the outskirts of town, far away from the cemetery, and the woods, and anywhere else that dead bodies had so far been found in Mystic Falls. It was outside of his pattern. Outside of his pattern was good. He didn’t have his mobile phone on him, so Liz wouldn’t be able to find him. He didn’t even have a key on him, so Stefan could lock him out of the house if he wanted. Damon wouldn’t force his way in. Hell, Stefan could lock him out of his life, and Elena’s too, if he chose.

As he stared out in front of him, he wondered how he’d let himself get into this mess. Again. Because he knew what Stefan had said to him wasn’t a lie. He’d been contentedly lying to himself as the nights had gone by and Elena had come to seem more and more a staple of their life here.

And he was pissed off that Stefan had allowed himself the indulgence to be locked up in order for all this to happen! Damon didn’t ask for this. Certainly didn’t want this. So where did that leave him now? Replacing one version of Katherine for another, that’s where.

Except, that wasn’t exactly where. Even Damon couldn’t lie to himself that far. Part of his annoyance was that she was not Katherine. And yet how else could he explain the way Elena had played happy houses with him while Stefan had been locked away? He knew she'd go back to him as soon as Stefan was better. Damon had only felt like this once in his life, and at 145 years, that was a long life. A long love. And, just like that one, this time only looked like it was going to burn him in the end.

Damn it, he didn’t want to get burnt again! The daisy head that he threw down in front of him got a particularly violent stomp, mashing it into the same dirty yellow pulp as the rest of its daisy friends before it.

For once, Damon didn’t know what to do. He had to do something. Stefan had outed him, but Damon thought he had taken care of that one. If Stefan was being predicable—unlike the way Damon was reacting right now—then little brother would be on his way to the school, facing up to his fear of bloodlust in order to protect Elena at all costs.

Just the way it should be.

*

Stefan had considered pulling up at school in his car. It was the only thing other than vampire speed that would get him to Elena fast enough, and he wasn't in the position to be using any vampire powers right now. Besides, he was pretty sure that Damon wasn’t serious when he threatened Elena, and the chance that Elena would hesitate over him if he just suddenly showed up driving his car after the last time when he’d been on the human blood was chance enough to get him to walk to school the normal way.

He saw her in the halls, talking to Bonnie and Caroline. Bonnie almost looked comfortable talking to Elena again. Clearly, this was the effect of a week with Stefan away from school and Damon nowhere to be seen. He was almost sorry when Bonnie sensed him coming. The open look on her face closed right up. He heard Elena saying her name, trying in vain to draw her out again, before Bonnie ducked her head and said something about their next class to Caroline. Caroline, bouncy as ever, said a chirpy goodbye to Elena before Bonnie all but dragged her off.

That just left Elena and Stefan.

She turned slowly, or maybe it was just his perception of it that was slow. There was still a little less than half a corridor between them, enough for Matt to get caught up in the way as he saw her and tried to ask her something.

“Not now, Matt.” The words were abrupt, but the smile she turned to him tried to make up for that.

“Alright. Later.” He followed her eye line and saw Stefan standing there staring at her. The look he gave Stefan was stiff, but he jogged off fast enough when Tyler called him.

It seemed an age until Elena was standing in front of him. She lifted her hand to caress his face. “Are you..?”

Stefan turned his head away reflexively, then tried to ignore the stab of pain that showed up on her features. “Not here.” He cleared his throat, then tried to take the abruptness out of his tone in the same way he’d seen her do with Matt. “Okay? We’ll talk, but...”

“Not here.” Elena’s face was at once composed. She nodded her head once to say she understood, but she didn’t touch him again until they were outside.

Once outside, Stefan started to have second thoughts about his decision to drag her out here. Sure, they were away from high school ears that might overhear keywords like “blood” or “vampire”, but out here there was no way of telling if Damon was nearby. It felt like when he’d first realised that Damon had come back to Mystic Falls.

When they were inside, Elena had made the decision to shut up and let him speak first. But now they were here, sitting on park benches, and the expression on Stefan’s face just kept getting more dire. “Stefan,” she said, getting his attention without touching him. “What’s wrong? What is it?”

“Damon.” Only one word, and yet Stefan saw how her face changed at the mention of it.

“Stefan, I don’t think you need to be worried about Damon anymore. He saved you—”

“Have you seen him?” Stefan asked, interrupting her.

“Seen him..? No.” She shook her head. “Not since the boarding house.” She exhaled, peering at him as she tried to understand. “Stefan, has something happened between you? You didn’t even leave the basement when I was going, and now you’re out again, as though nothing’s happened..?”

“Damon threatened you.” Stefan said the words starkly, not knowing any other way to say them.

Elena’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline.

Stefan relented. “I don’t think he was serious. Not really. But I had to... I had to see you, make sure you were okay.”

Elena’s brow cleared. She sighed. “Always have to be in danger from one of you, don’t I?” He could tell that she was trying to take this lightly, but it wasn’t quite working. He shouldn’t have said it like this. If he’d been thinking, he wouldn’t have.

“Elena, I...”

“Damon’s been good to me. He’s been good to you.” Elena wasn’t looking at Stefan anymore. She was gazing off as though trying to work something out. “Why would he do something like that?”

As Elena still wasn’t looking at Stefan, the younger brother murmured only, “Why does he do anything?”

*

Elena still had to go back home that night, the home she shared with Jenna and Jeremy not the boarding house. She had to admit to feeling much less comfortable about it than she had when she set out of there that morning. The crumpled up paper bag, stuffed into the bottom of her bag after she’d eaten its contents, didn’t offer any explanations for Damon’s behaviour. No, she thought. Nothing’s going to explain Damon’s behaviour apart from Damon.

Over dinner, Jeremy seemed surly with her, just shy of too surly for Jenna to take him up on it. Jenna herself wasn’t too pleased with Elena, and used Jeremy’s attitude to guilt her.

“I don’t know, Elena. Maybe he’s gotten used to being the only child in the house.”

Between the two of them, she was feeling quite wretched when she hid herself away in her room, just wishing for the comfortable companionship that had been established at the boarding house over the last week. Elena hoped that Stefan was overreacting to whatever it was Damon had said. She didn’t think she could take the idea of that comfort being taken away from her too.

She managed to find time to sneak by the boarding house after school the following day, but before Jenna expected her home. Damon wasn’t home, but at least Stefan was out of the basement.

“I see progress.” Elena entered the boarding house with a smile. What she didn’t see was the dark shape of Damon, approaching the boarding house from the other direction, and stepping back out of Elena’s sight as she walked into Stefan’s home. He watched her though. And listened. In her hand was a paper bag. “I even brought presents for progress,” she said.

As she walked further into the house, it was quiet as neither Elena or Stefan spoke. Damon’s ears picked up what they were doing. Stefan let her kiss him again. He could only imagine what Stefan must have felt at the first contact of Elena’s lips against his after this long. Damon’s jaw muscles worked relentlessly as he imagined Elena unguarded as her arms slipped up around Stefan’s shoulders. She would give herself up fully to the kiss, for it had been a long time for her too. No thoughts of Damon, now that he had done the hard work of pulling them back together again. Damon’s face twisted in bitterness. He shook his head, ready to resume his stride back into the house and interrupt the cream gotten by the cat look that was bound to be on her face.

Stefan was talking. “I could get used to this again,” he said.

“You’d better,” Elena replied him smartly. This time, it was Damon who didn’t see, but her smile faltered a little when she leaned in to whisper, “Is Damon here?”

Whispering was no good when you wanted to avoid vampires overhearing you. Damon wanted step right inside and remind her of this little tid-bit, but the tone of Stefan’s voice stopped him. Unlike Elena, his brother made no effort to not be overheard. “No. I haven’t seen him since yesterday.”

Damon listened then, very carefully, to the response that got. He could convince himself that the concern in Stefan’s voice was feigned. Elena’s voice would tell him more, he thought, even as he told himself that he didn’t care and it didn’t matter.

“I’m worried, Stefan. This isn’t like him. Not lately.”

Stefan was silent and Damon was okay with that. His brow creased as he judged Elena’s words not to be an act. A part of him wished that he could just walk on in there. With Stefan out of the basement, it could be better between them than it had been over the last week.

Except, Stefan’s being in the basement was the only reason why Elena had been willing to suffer his attentions all week. She’d been using him. Damon held that emotion tightly to him as he entered the boarding house.

“Damon can hear you!” he said in a loud sing-song voice, looking directly at neither one of them.

“Damon, you’re back,” Elena said, starting towards him, before Stefan grabbed her arm to stay her. When she looked up at him, there was a watchful look in his eye.

“Damon, what are you doing?” he asked, and in his voice was all the suspicion that Elena had heard in it the previous day at school.

“Stefan...!” Elena began, but neither one of the boys were listening to her. She looked between the two brothers.

“What does it look like I’m doing,” Damon asked, all apparently good nature. It might have fooled someone who didn’t know him that well.

Stefan and Elena were not those people. “Why don’t you give me a hint,” Stefan asked.

“I’ll give you more than that.” His eyes dipped down to Elena, and Elena didn’t like what she saw in that look. It seemed like he hated her. The very thought of it took her breath away, before Damon looked up to Stefan again. “I’m giving you the house. I’m giving you Mystic Falls. All of its problems,” again, he looked to Elena, “are yours.”

It didn’t seem as though Stefan knew what to do with all that spite, seemingly wrapped in a gift. Elena knew she had to do something. She couldn’t let him just leave after giving her that look.

“Stefan...” She tried again, and this time Stefan looked down and saw her. “Do you mind if I speak to Damon on my own for a second?”

Stefan’s eyes flashed up to Damon, who merely looked at him with crazy eyes, just daring Stefan to leave him alone with his girlfriend.

There was hesitation in Stefan’s voice, but he nodded, looked back to Elena, and said, “I’ll be on my cell if you need me.”

“She won’t,” Damon replied brightly, but there was an underlying insecurity to his voice.

As soon as Stefan was out the door, Damon ignored Elena, walking up to his alcohol cabinet and pouring himself a liberal serve of scotch. Elena watched him, with arms crossed over her chest.

“Damon,” she said, trying to get his attention. When that failed, her voice came a little more sharply the second time. “Damon, we need to talk.”

“Probably not a good idea to interrupt me right now,” Damon said, with scotch glass poised in front of his lips. “You know how we vampires need alcohol to take the edge off our cravings.”

Elena’s lips pressed together, but she nodded her head. “Stefan said you’d threatened me,” she said, as though something about all this made sense.

Damon took a swig of scotch. “Of course he did,” was all he said.

Elena was getting sick of this act real quickly. “Damon, I know what you’re doing,” she said.

That got Damon’s attention. His eyes narrowed and his lips smiled, but there was no mirth in the expression. “You think so?” he asked.

“I do.” The situation was not unlike the one she had faced with Stefan a week ago, only now she was minus vervain, and minus Damon’s backup. She suddenly wondered if she had been very wrong to request this conversation. Stefan would be far enough away that he wouldn’t overhear their conversation, too far to help if something here went wrong.

The curve of Damon’s lips said that he heard a change in her heart rate, attributing it correctly to fear of him. The attention he was giving her at once became very predatory. “Nervous, Elena? You look as though you’ve just realised you’re alone in a room with a monster.”

“You’re not a monster,” Elena replied, and it was only because of the number of times she’d told him that she was able to do so now without her voice shaking.

“Is that so?” Damon stated, circling her and hating himself as he watched her warily keep the same amount of distance between them. He could have cut that distance away before she could have blinked. He didn’t think closely on why he didn’t.

Elena swallowed. “Damon,” she said. “You’re my friend. Why are you doing this?”

“Why did you spend the last week cosying up to me?” he asked, turning the questioning around on her. “Could you really not go without having Stefan’s attention for that long?”

All expression on Elena’s face dropped and, for the first time, Damon entertained the thought that he might have been wrong about her motivations.

Elena slowly shook her head. There was only one thought that was going through her head then, only one answer that she had to his question, and be damned if she was going to give him that answer now. She reached instead for the cell phone she kept in her pocket.

Damon chose that moment to speed towards her, taking the cell out of her hands, before moving away from her as though he couldn’t stand to be so close.

“Uh uh uh. You said you wanted time alone with me. Aren’t you having fun, Elena?”

“Damon, you need to stop this. Stop it now!”

“Oh, okay then. I didn’t see it that way. Not.” Damon glared at her. “Now, you see, this is how it feels to be played with. Except...” Damon tipped his head to the side, considering her. “I’m better at this game than you. I want you to get out of my house.”

Elena froze, staring at him.

A slight curl took the side of Damon’s lips. “Don’t make me start counting,” he said.

“Damon, I never played you,” she said.

Damon didn’t respond to that. “One...” he said, instead.

Letting all thoughts of self-preservation leap out the window, Elena closed the distance between them again. Damon’s lips were shaped around the counting of the second digit, but he never said it.

“Damon. Please. I wasn’t playing you.” Looking up at him, Elena hesitatingly lifted a hand just to touch his jaw line. The look on his face as he allowed her to do it almost broke her heart. He leaned into her fingers, and Elena wondered just how long it had been since anyone had touched him like this. “I love you,” she said, so softly that it might not have been heard if it was anyone else.

It broke the spell. Damon growled and shoved her hand away. Elena didn’t know what had happened, until Damon spat out, “You love Stefan.”

“I do.” Elena looked away, bit her lip.

Damon sneered. “How very Katherine of you.”

“No.” Elena said that vehemently. “I’m nothing like Katherine.”

Damon’s eyebrows lifted. “Could have fooled me. From where I’m standing, you look like a mirror image.”

Elena’s voice shook, but she forced herself to say it, “You know that’s not true.”

“I don’t know about anything right now. First you send your boyfriend away so that you can tell his brother you love him—”

“I sent him away so that I could see what was upsetting you! I told you I loved you because you thought I had played you.” Angry tears filled Elena’s eyes, but she refused to let them fall. “Is it my fault that you are so hung up on your issues about Katherine that you don’t know about anything right now?”

As Damon stared at her, it seemed as though she was about to say something else. He struggled to keep hold of his righteous anger, of what he thought of as his righteous anger. Hearing her diatribe—hearing that she loved him!—that was taking away from some of that righteous feeling.

In front of him, Elena’s small body was shaking. She looked him up and down, her eyes shiny with tears unshed, and it was not a look he would have wished to have from her. “I don’t know why I love you,” she said, mouth twisting in distaste even as she shook her head.

She didn’t remember her cell phone when she left him, and he didn’t have the inclination to follow.


	3. Haunted (3/4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“We’re vampires, Elena. We’ve lived for almost 150 years. The sorts of taboos you worry about don’t really faze us anymore. Especially considering the circumstances under which we were made.”_ AU series that follows events from 1X19.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was a mere little summary fic that has been blown into the awesome mess that it is by the wonderful coquilleon.

"Damon."

Damon slowly became aware that Stefan was talking to him.

"Damon."

Stefan just looked at his brother. For once, Damon couldn’t face him, not even long enough to tell him to go away.

“I’m... going to need her cell so I can give it back to her.” It was the most impartial thing Stefan could think of to say. He’d seen Elena on the way out of the house, gotten some of the conversation to have happened between them, but she had hardly been at the point of making sense. Apart from Katherine, love, and stupid brother, there hadn’t been a lot in what she’d said that made sense.

He’d been ready to rip into Damon until he’d seen him.

Damon had stumbled forward into a chair, his scotch forgotten, head dropped back against the chair as though he lacked the will to move it. When Stefan asked for Elena’s phone, Damon barely felt Stefan take it from nerveless hands. He looked at his hand for a moment, absent of the phone that had dug uncomfortable looking shapes into his palm,

After several moments of waiting for Damon to stir, and Damon remaining motionless, Stefan put Elena’s phone in his pocket and got ready to go.

"I love her too," he said staring into an empty glass left on the coffee table, as though it would give him the salvation he so desperately needed from his brother.

He looked up to Stefan, and didn't see the judgement he expected to be there. Damon felt sure there should have been something there, there would have been something there if it had been him, wouldn't it? Jealousy? Ire at the least. Or... insecurity?

Except, of course, Stefan wouldn't feel insecurity. Katherine had chosen him first. Elena had chosen him first.

"I love her too." He said it this time staring Stefan in the face.

Stefan nodded, just once. "I know." He thinned his lips, torn between going after his girlfriend, and being here for his brother. "This is painful for you, isn't it?"

Damon glanced longingly towards the bottle of scotch that was sitting so far away from the arm of the chair. "Yes," he all but whispered.

Stefan's gaze was understanding. "I'm sorry."

Damon just shook his head. Looking up to the ceiling, he said, "You know we've got to keep her safe."

This time Stefan willingly followed Damon's gaze, and his conversation change. "You know the only way we're going to be able to do that is if we're not fighting each other."

"To not fighting each other it is then," said Damon. He was silent for a while.

Stefan had thought he was done with the conversation. His eyes moved from the ceiling to the front door.

“Is it always like this?”

Of course Damon would wait until then to speak. Damon’s voice didn’t sound like his own, and that was part of the reason Stefan stopped, and turned back to face him.

“Like what?” Stefan asked, genuinely perplexed.

“Love. Does it always rip you up inside? I can’t understand why people do it.”

At the lost look in his older brother’s eyes, Stefan felt compelled to sit back down. “No,” he said heavily, wondering why it had fallen upon him to try to fix up the aftermath of his brother’s feelings towards his girlfriend. “It doesn’t always rip you up inside. Some people make it worth it.”

“Like you and Elena.” The words didn’t sound like a question. In fact, they sounded like a desperate need to be right. Stefan didn’t pretend to know why.

Damon’s words had the effect of making Stefan think of how close he’d come to losing her over the human blood. An incident that Damon had helped him to get over and start to move past. He owed him.

“Like me and Elena. Like you and Elena over the last week.”

Damon exhaled in what might have been a scoff or a snort and in both respects wasn’t. He didn’t talk again, and Stefan eventually left.

*

The walk over the Elena’s was long. Still feeling weak from his abstinence on blood, and too afraid to really go drinking even animal blood again, Stefan knew he wasn’t up for all of this. That the walk to Elena’s house taxed him so much was telling.

Jenna answered the door at Elena’s house. She had a welcome smile, but there was steel behind it.

“You’re not to steal her away again, okay Stefan? She has a home too, just like I’m sure Damon says the same thing to you.”

Actually, Jenna was sure of no such thing and Stefan knew it, but it didn’t behove him to make the point so he nodded absently and smiled before taking the steps up to Elena’s bedroom.

He left the door open. She was sitting in her bay window staring out. She turned when she heard him there, and gave him a wan smile when she saw her phone.

“Thanks for that,” she said, making no move to actually pick up the phone from him. He put it on her bed, then sat there.

“Are you alright?” he asked, after a sufficiently lengthy pause passed between them.

“I’m sorry. I’m probably terrible company right now.” Elena tried a smile, which Stefan recognised as fake, but appreciated the effort nonetheless.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Do I...?” Elena laughed a bitter laugh. “Do I want to talk to my boyfriend about another man. Sure!” She went back to staring at the street outside her window.

“We’re vampires, Elena. We’ve lived for almost 150 years. The sorts of taboos you worry about don’t really faze us anymore. Especially considering the circumstances under which we were made.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Stefan knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words slipped out, knew it with tension that stiffened her shoulders and back. He would have taken them back, if he’d known how.

“Of course. Cause I’m just a copy of Katherine.” She was still turned away, so Stefan couldn’t see her features, only that she shook her head to the street and the tone of her voice already sounded defeated. “A mirror image,” she almost whispered.

“Come one, Elena. I didn’t mean that,” Stefan started.

“Didn’t you? Doesn’t matter.” She finished that train of thought, whatever it was, inside of her head before turning around to face him. Her eyes studiously avoided the phone lying on her bed. “Thank you for coming over,” she told him, and this time she meant it, wasn’t just saying it for politeness sake.

She sat on his lap, then, holding onto him as though that might make some difference towards the better. Stefan only wished he had the power to make it work like that.

*  
Elena was determined to put all this behind her. As she wrote that line in her diary, she put a decided exclamation mark at the end of the sentence. It was time to move on. Stefan was fine, Damon was back to normal, and that was just the way she had to think of it. It had been a strange week that was unlikely to repeat again, and it was just best for all involved if everyone picked it up and moved on. Especially since she couldn’t keep expecting to get good marks if she wasn’t paying attention in class. She really didn’t needed Alaric worrying Jenna by telling her that Elena was being inattentive at school.

The resolution was clear. It wasn’t like she and Damon had even spent that much time around each other before all of this. Things would just go back to normal again. Even if Elena couldn’t stop thinking about what Stefan had said about taboos not really fazing them anymore. Even if that thought led onto thoughts of Katherine. Even if every time she thought of Katherine, she heard Damon’s bitter tone accounting just how much of a mirror image she was to Katherine.

Damon, who was waiting for her, standing where he knew she’d see at lunch time. She was talking to Caroline at the time. Caroline didn’t see him, and Elena pretended not to. When Damon started to walk towards them, Elena packed up their things and convinced Caroline they needed to go find Bonnie.

Damon was standing just to the side of hundreds of high schoolers streaming out of the school as the last bell of the day rang. Elena was walking with Stefan, adjusting her bag strap on her shoulder as she noticed him. Had he gone home since lunch time, or had he just been loitering the entire time?

“Elena?” Stefan’s voice brought her out of herself, and she looked at him. He offered her his arm. “Are you okay?”

Damon heard both sentences. She could tell that in the way that he inclined his head when she couldn’t help but look at him again. Couldn’t help but look away. She walked past Damon, her eyes downcast and her hand tightly grasping Stefan’s arm in a way that Damon couldn’t hear, and only Stefan could feel.

She was at home again that night, bedroom door closed, diary left unwritten in. She couldn’t bring herself to write pleased sentences of her achievement in putting all this behind her. In truth, she hardly thought that the ignore-and-it-goes-away approach was all that much like putting this behind her.

When there was a soft knocking at her door, Elena’s heart jumped in her chest before she realised that Damon wouldn’t knock at her door, would be more likely to come in through her window.

“Come in,” Elena said, unable to bring any upbeat tone to her voice.

It was Jenna who opened her door, who closed the door softly behind her and treaded over to Elena’s bed.

“Is everything okay with you and Stefan?” Jenna asked gently.

“Oh yeah. Everything’s fine with me and Stefan.” If there was a little bit more emphasis in Elena’s voice when she spoke her boyfriend’s name, she couldn’t help that, not really.

Jenna’s brow furrowed, and Elena really didn’t know how to help her out.

“Just for once, can’t I be a temperamental teen without having to give a reason why?” Elena asked. She struggled for levity, and thought she succeeded until Jenna met her eyes again.

“I worry about you, Elena. First you’re away for a week at the boarding house, and since you’ve come home, you’ve been...” Jenna frowned. Clearly she didn’t know how to be helped out any more than Elena knew how to help her. “You weren’t... hurt... while you were at the boarding house, were you?”

Elena looked blankly at Jenna. Then the suggestion Jenna was trying to make sunk through and Elena’s eyes widened. Stefan had held her to a wall, Damon had threatened her, alluded to drinking from her and stolen her cell phone, but neither of them had hurt her. Certainly not in the way that Jenna seemed to be thinking.

“Oh god. No. No,” Elena said firmly, making sure that she maintained eye contact with her aunt lest there be any confusion.

“Okay then.” Jenna was obviously relieved, but embarrassed at the same time. “You won’t tell Stefan that I...?”

Elena raised her eyebrows. Then, “No. Of course not.” And, since she was not talking to Damon, there was no danger of her telling him either. “I’m just tired from school. Alaric's a hard task master of history studies.” Jenna blushed as Elena said that, and Elena was sure she knew exactly why. She was happy for them. Really.

A bittersweet feeling filled her after Jenna left her room, reassured as she was that Elena had not been abused during her stay in the boarding house. Elena wished that she could so easily reassure herself. She had been as happy with Stefan as Jenna obviously was with Alaric. Why had she thought she could have more? Why had Stefan decided to tell her that it would be okay with him if he did? And why did Damon...

Everything. Why was Damon so... Damon?

As if he was in her head—again—there was another tapping outside her room, this time on the window to her room. Damon sat on the other side of the window. The look he was giving to the locked window seemed to suggest that the window was deliberately going out of its way to put him out of his.

Elena stared at him with something very akin to terror. Now that he was right there, she didn’t know she was expected to talk to him.

Instead of saying anything, Elena opted for shaking her head silently, before turning away. Maybe if she went into her bathroom, he would be gone by the time she came out...

“Elena.” His voice was muffled through the window, but nonetheless audible through the glass. Just the sound of his voice had the ability to turn her around. “You’re not really going to leave me out here, are you?” And he pulled that kicked puppy face, which really wasn’t fair, considering.

“Damon...” Elena was careful about the volume she pitched her voice at. The last thing she wanted was Jer or Jenna overhearing her. But then, once she said his name, she realised she had no idea what else she wanted to say to him. “Just leave me alone, okay? You made yourself clear.”

“Yeah, see, I disagree.” Although he was a vampire, all vampire agility and ability to scale walls to find themselves at locked windows, Damon seemed to be having trouble keeping himself up on her ledge. Keeping himself there comfortably, anyway. “If you’d let me in, I’d be happy to show you the ways I disagree.”

Holding herself together with arms crossed over her stomach, Elena shook her head again.

“Elena.” For the first time, the surety in Damon’s eyes slipped. It couldn’t have been the first time a woman rejected him. Elena swallowed, and fought to stand her ground. For an instant, Damon’s finger tips pressed against the glass of her window. Then he was gone, vampire speed carrying him away from the window as though he’d never been there.

Immediately, Elena rushed to her window, unable to stop herself from making sure he hadn’t just fallen, and wasn’t hurt on the front lawn of her home right now. But there was no sign of him, even directly beneath her window. He was gone and, apart from the feeling of there being a hole in her heart, it was easy to imagine he’d never been there.


	4. Haunted (4/4)

“In your window? Hang on.” Stefan uncurled from the seat by his bed as he heard someone else enter the house. At this time, it was likely to be only one person. You know, unless you considered Anna, or Pearl, or maybe John Gilbert himself come to visit.

It was, perhaps predictably, none of those and was, in fact, Damon.

“Could I... call you back?” Stefan asked, speaking to Elena into the phone. After getting her assent, Stefan hung up the cell. “That was Elena on the phone,” he said, just in case Damon was interested.

All he got from Damon was a grunt for his troubles.

He tried again. “You know, hanging onto the ledge outside a girl's house could be seen as stalking,” Stefan said idly. Then, as though in afterthought, Stefan added, “She was worried you fell.”

Damon sat back in the chair he'd fallen into. “Why are you doing this, Stefan?” he asked, eyes narrowing, even as Stefan's lifted innocently.

“Hey, if you don't want my help...”

“I didn't say that.” Damon stood up, coming toe to toe with his brother. “I asked why are you giving it?”

Stefan sighed. “You helped me,” he answered with a shrug. “Both of us. Who knows how long I would have stayed in that basement if not for you.”

“A long time, brother,” Damon said, elongating his vowels with a dip of his head. He looked Stefan up and down. “So this is just, what? Return favour?”

“You could say that,” Stefan replied.

Damon peered at Stefan. “But would you say that?”

Stefan changed the subject. “Look, Damon. This is the wrong way of doing it. I'm still not happy that you threatened her, really not pleased with the way you reacted when she told you she loved you.” Damon flinched at that, but immediately tried to shrug it off. Stefan went on. “But she does love you. And you love her.”

Damon narrowed his eyes and gave Stefan a considering stare, which eventually lost it's focus; it seemed as if he'd moved on to considering what Stefan had just stated.

“She wouldn't let me in,” he mumbled, eventually.

“She doesn't want to talk to you right now,” Stefan said, as though this was perfectly reasonable.

To Damon it wasn't. To Damon, the sentence brought back thoughts of Elena using Damon just the same as Katherine had. He exploded, “If she loves me, how can she not want to talk to me?”

“Think back. You haven’t exactly given her a lot of reason to be comfortable with how she feels,” Stefan answered, borrowing some of his brother’s customary dryness.

“I thought...” Oh, but it sounded so stupid now. Damon couldn’t bring himself to sound that stupid in front of Stefan.

“That she was using you.” Stefan nodded as Damon’s head swung around to look at him. “I wasn’t so far away as you both thought. Then again you were distracted.”

Damon snorted in disgust.

“But she’s not Katherine, Damon.” Stefan was peering at Damon intently, willing for him to believe it. “And, if you let her, she’ll prove that.”

But Damon was narrowing his eyes again. “Why would you be willing to share?”

Stefan looked down on Damon, for all the world as though he was the little, unknowing brother. “Don’t you think we’ve been alive for a little long to have hang-ups about sharing?”

Damon straightened. “Point,” he granted. His eyes took on that far away cast again, as though he was plotting. “Point,” he said again.

Stefan gave a half smile that Damon didn’t look up to see, before leaving the room to call Elena back.

“Everything’s okay,” he said immediately into the phone as Elena picked up. “It was just Damon returning home.”

“And he’s okay?” Elena asked. “Not spurting out more threats against me or anything?”

“No, nothing like that,” Stefan was quick to say.

“Good. Well good then.”

Elena settled herself on her bed and tried to remind herself of what it was like to be convinced that everything was fine. It felt like so long since she’d really believed in that. Unbidden, her eyes stole again to the window where Damon had just been perched.

“I don’t know what to do, Stefan. How am I meant to act? I can’t just act as though he didn’t scare me, didn’t yell at me and say those things.” And Stefan had told her that she could have both of them; now he just had to tell her how she was meant to do that.

On his end of the line, Stefan restrained a sigh, knowing that Damon was going to be able to hear this conversation if he was of a mind to listen in. The idea of a private relationship between vampires living in the same house had always been ludicrous.

“Just act like... you, Elena. Tell him how you feel. Hell,” he added, in a tone that wasn’t completely directed towards Elena, “it would probably do him a bit of good to have boundaries well defined by someone he cares to listen to.”

“Okay...” Completely unaware of the likelihood that Damon was listening into their conversation, Elena considered Stefan’s words. “Yeah. I can do that. You’ll back me up, right?”

Stefan turned to find Damon leaning casually against his doorframe. Looking Damon in the eye as he said it, Stefan replied with, “Of course I will.”

*

Elena began the day with reminding herself that she was in control of this situation. She hadn’t done anything wrong in falling in love with Damon. She thought that one or other of the brothers would have told her by now if that was the case! Instead, she'd been told the opposite. The day passed by in a light haze of Elena trying to twist her mind toward this new ideal.

By the time she saw Damon again, there was a new sense of courage in her, but also a sense of trepidation. The brothers had been alive for 150 odd years, living through outdated modes of thinking. So Stefan said. But Elena had not lived that long time, nor had the sense of self to be able to tell what was outdated, or dated, or just normal. She was a 17 year old girl, and when she saw Damon walking towards her, what she felt was her heart flutter. Damon was smiling, that squinty smile as though the sun was shining directly into his eyes, but the smile kept on shifting, as though he wasn’t sure of its reception.

“Can I interest you in an early dinner?” he asked.

“Oh, uh, Jenna’s making food tonight...” Elena paused halfway through her denial of him. The excuse she made was valid, just as valid as it was every night. Damon was squinting at her, seemingly trying to hold himself in check until a definite decision was made on her part. She took a deep, steadying breath. She wasn’t playing him. She was the one in control here, and she was able, even encouraged, to define the boundaries between them. It was this knowledge that changed her mind halfway through the speaking of it. “I... I’ll just call her to say that I won’t be in for dinner.”

She maintained eye contact with him while she pulled her phone out. As she held it in her hand, she felt a momentary thrill of fear as her mind flashed back to the last time she had reached for her phone in front of him.

He registered it. Of course he registered it. It had only been a couple of days since she’d been a regular inhabitant at the boarding house. It felt like longer.

“Elena,” he said, and his voice was as deep and serious as she had ever heard it. “I won’t hurt you. I promise.”

Elena dialled Jenna’s number without replying to him, content to leave a false-happy message on the machine, rather than trying to dodge her aunt’s possible questions.

Dinner was at the Grill, where Elena felt safe and their outing would be public. It didn’t occur to her to care what people might have thought of her, out having dinner with Damon with Stefan nowhere in sight. To be honest, she’d stopped caring what other people thought of her quite so much after her parents died.

“So. Here we are.” Damon’s first valiant attempt to bring in a jovial mood failed spectacularly as he opened the menu. “I see chicken wings in our future,” he added, waggling his eyebrows at her enticingly from above the menu.

“I could eat chicken wings,” Elena offered graciously, allowing a small smile to graze her lips as she answered him.

“I’ve missed that smile,” Damon murmured, before waving over one of the wait staff. “Um, yes. Two bowls of your very best chicken wings. Thank you kindly.”

After the waitress moved off to register the order with the kitchen, Damon turned back to Elena and winked.

I’ve missed that smile. He delivered it so cleanly, almost as he if wanted the moment to easily pass by. It wasn’t a line, he didn’t give it the weight of that.

“Damon, I...”

“Elena? What a coincidence! Me and Matt were just...”

Caroline came past their table, dragging a less willing Matt along with her. Damon was plainly not the brother she’d been expecting to see when she’d started her trek over here.

“Uh, Caroline, maybe we’d better leave these two to their dinner,” Matt said, somewhat awkwardly, but Caroline wasn’t paying attention to him. She was looking between Elena and Damon. Elena herself looked between Elena and Damon, trying to see whatever it was that Caroline saw.

“Elena...” Caroline said it in a hiss, more like a stage whisper that everyone on the surrounding tables would be able to hear. “Are you cheating on Stefan?”

“No!” Elena tried to give the question all the importance it deserved, which was none, but that didn’t take away the look that was on Caroline’s face. Oh god, was that why Matt was being so awkward? Did he think the same thing too?

“Well. Good then. Because I really do think Stefan is the better choice. No offence, Damon,” Caroline said in leaving, with what was very much a tone made for offence.

“None taken, Caroline!” Damon rebutted. He rolled his eyes before he looked back to Elena. “Really, I would have expected more from Liz’s daughter.”

Elena tried to smile, tried to let herself be led into the light-hearted mood that Damon was making such strides towards creating. But she just didn’t feel it. Caroline’s interruption didn’t help, but even before that...

“Here you go. That’s two serves of chicken wings. Enjoy!”

As the two bowls were deposited on the table between them, Elena looked up into Damon’s eyes. It was then that she noticed, for the first time, how unguarded they appeared. From his voice, she’d expected all the guards that were usually in place. Was this really the first time she had looked into his eyes since coming in here?

Underneath the jovial exterior, there was the expectation in his eyes of being hurt. It was almost completely hidden, but Elena could see it in the moments when they were both still, before one of them said something.

Right on cue, Damon said, “Mm, chicken wings. Do you think two bowls will be enough?”

“Damon,” Elena said again, hoping this time she wouldn’t be interrupted by one of the many Mystic Falls residence who could conceivably come up with a reason to come by her table while she was having dinner. Suddenly, having this outing in a public space didn’t seem like such a great idea. He’d promised her that he wouldn’t hurt her. What was their friendship worth if she didn’t trust him? “We should get out of here,” she said.

“I thought you’d never ask,” Damon said, with his most Damon-like eye roll yet. With all the grace of a big cat, Damon pulled himself out from the booth they’d both sat in, put money down for the wings they hadn’t touched, and escorted her out of the Grill. Elena didn’t even look over her shoulder to see who was watching.

As soon as the night air hit her face, Elena felt more refreshed. This was better, she thought immediately.

“Much better.” Damon echoed her thoughts on a relieved smile. He looked at her, and Elena looked back at him, really looked back, no guards in place, striving towards that comfortable camaraderie they’d shared while Stefan weaned himself off the human blood. “Come with me,” he said suddenly. “I have somewhere I want to show you.”

Obligingly, she took his hand when he offered it. Then, she spent the following moments dwelling in the awareness that she was holding his hand. She, Elena, was holding Damon’s hand. On a date. She thought it was a date. And things were...

Damon turned to look down at her, and the smile he gave her reached his eyes.

“I’ve missed that smile,” Elena murmured, but there were no chicken wings to distract from the line. The look on Damon’s face said that he didn’t mind. Not at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ 'Elena is in our veins', compiled by VaPaBrasil](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h18aBix5R1Q&feature=related)


End file.
